Gruff Rhys 'planned piano ballads LP'

Gruff Rhys has quipped that he was planning to record an album of piano ballads.

The Super Furry Animals frontman told BBC 6 Music that he changed the direction of his third solo studio effort, the follow-up to 2007's Candylion.

Rhys said of the record: "There's no dominant concept I'm happy to say. It's just a straight-up album of confessional piano ballads. I thought I was getting on a bit - the time had come to get a suit and record an album of piano ballads - except it always goes wrong.

"So that was the plan, and then I went to the studio and things turned out slightly different. So you've got songs like 'Shark Ridden Waters', which has some piano in there, but it's not really a piano ballad - but there's still some left on the record."

He added: "Before you knew it, I was trying to write a song inspired by Jaws 3. It's a bit tenuous, but the word shark does appear in the title, so there is some kind of link.

"It's built up out of hundreds of noises and other people's records. There's bells, and chimes and the main sample band called The Circle, a late-'60s West Coast pop band."